Freo Press makes a stand
Oh, yes, the Fremantle Press executive have made it clear, they will publish Boy on a Wire.
It’s not in the bookshops yet; there are no pre-release copies available yet; the writer does not have a PDF he can send to all his friends.
But.
On its website, the official one, Fremantle Press has news.
Go take a look.
Click on this!
And now for the back
It’s logical: every front has a back, and here it is.
Can’t read the back page?
Here it is in text:
“In the boarding house it doesn’t matter who hit you first, or if they miss-hit, you have to get them back. It’s kid against kid, dog against dog. We all have rabies. We all have pinks disease. We’re all foaming at the mouth. Tit for tat, the strong rule the weak, the weak cry. Only those who can find the mean streak in them survive. I’m a survivor. Briggsy taught me that. If you’re weak, unspeakable things happen to you. The bastards won’t get me.”
It is the 1960s in Perth, Western Australia. For Thomas Muir, cool and steady, life is a thing that goes on outside him. But for his brother, hot-headed Jack, believer in honesty and justice, life must be wrestled to be understood.
Jack Muir’s years of survival and his coming of age in a boys’ boarding school are sharply revealed in this dislocated memoir. Jack’s story is funny and raw. It will strike a nerve in those who were there and in anyone who has ever asked: how it is that one becomes a man?
Cherries
I love cherries.
They are the fruit of love.
Each and every year I work on a cherry festival, the Manjimup Cherry Harmony Festival, a town in the south west of Western Australia.
This year, because of much needed torrential rain, rain that has filled many a country dam, a number of growers will struggle to fill a bucket in time for the festival hordes. However, as is always the case in this wondrous world in which we live, other growers will have more than usual. It’s the weather. It doesn’t hit us all the same.
Here is the cherry according to Wikipedia:
The word cherry refers to a fleshy fruit (drupe) that contains a single stony seed. The cherry belongs to the family Rosaceae, genus Prunus, along with almonds, peaches, plums, apricots and bird cherries. The word “cherry” comes from the French word “cerise”, which comes in turn from the Latin words cerasum and Cerasus.
Interesting. And there’s more:
The cherry is generally understood to have been brought to Rome from northeastern Anatolia, historically known as the Pontus region, in 72 BC.
That’s probably enough. If you want to know more about what happens in Manjimup on the weekend of the 13th of December, 2008, take a look at these sites.
Here’s how it works
My car, if you read an earlier blog, was killed, by a suicidal kangaroo.
The insurance company wrote it off, said it was dead, for all time, a meaningless pile of metal and plastic. We will declare it null and void, they said, which means you will have to re-license it. I said fine, ok, whatever it takes, because I like my car, I respect my car, as far as I am concerned it is not worth killing. Neither was the kangaroo, but it gave the car no choice, jumping as it did, right in front, while the car was at some pace.
All was done. I bought the wreck. On advice of the insurance company. Ricky Heng (earlier blog) repaired it. It ran well. The insurance company told me I could drive it away as the de-licensing had not taken place. all is good, they said. Excellent, I replied.
On arrival in my new home town of Albany, the Department of Planning and Infrastructure, the one responsible for licensing vehicles, makes sense, sent me a letter saying I had to hand in my number plates because my car had been de-licensed.
On instruction, I booked my car into a service station, one that checks vehicles for the Department, obtained a special permit to drive an unlicensed vehicle, had it checked, approved, then drove to the Department’s licensing centre.
You may not believe this, but it is true, the Department official then told me my car was not de-licensed and, in fact, was still in the system. In other words, licensed. So I can drive away then, I said, as though nothing has changed, as though you have not disrupted my life for no apparent reason, as though Mumbai has not been under attack, the world financial crisis has not occurred, and as though it is safe to yell I VOTED FOR BARAK OBAMA in the middle of Omaha Nebraska? She stared at me. Almost smiled, but not quite sure. She regained composure, then said, no, we have to re-license it. Mmmm, I said.
Right then and there, before my very eyes, she de-licensed the car, just so she could re-license it.
Wondrous. Amazing. I remain smacked, in the gob, and marvel at the trivial matters that inspire me.
Boy on a Wire
This is the front cover of Boy on a Wire, a book I wrote.
There is a bit more about under the heading above. Take a look.